“He’s in the Peace Corps,” Beck supplied, his voice unreadable.
“Wow.” Eva had a calculating look that made Skye nervous. “Well, I think we should invite him to join us for Skye’s tasting tomorrow afternoon. Beck, is there anyone you’d want to invite for your judging in the morning?”
Even in the midst of her dismay over this turn of events, Skye was avid to know the answer to that question. She watched Beck from under her lashes, taking in every shift and nuance of his expression.
Which barely changed at all as he said, “No. There’s no one.”
Skye’s heart, which had already been through the wringer today, shredded a little more.
Clearly taken aback by the uncompromising answer, Eva raised her brows. “Oh! Well, if you’re sure … then I guess it’s time to get this challenge started. I know you have a lot of prep work to do, so please take your positions and I’ll start the clock.”
Feeling like she’d barely survived an ambush, Skye somehow made it back to her station where Fiona stood sharpening their knives on a honing steel.
“What was that all about?” Fee asked, concern roughening her voice. She’d been worried about Skye since the shopping trip that morning, but there hadn’t been a moment to fill her in on the incredible developments of the past twenty-four hours.
Or maybe Skye just hadn’t known what to say about it all. Kind of like now.
“Nothing,” Skye said, straightening her stance and watching the clock for the moment to start. “Let’s just cook.”
Everything else would have to wait.
Chapter 26
Beck woke up at oh-dark-hundred, as alert and ready to move as if it were noon. He blinked into the darkness of the hotel room he and Win shared and tried to let himself be soothed by the rhythmic breathing coming from the other double bed.
Knowing what lay in store for him later that day, though … it would take more than a little light snoring and snuffling to calm Beck down.
Besides, mental prep was important. At least as important as the cooking they’d done the day before, and the finishing touches they would put on their dishes this morning before serving the judges at eleven thirty.
The judges, and Skye.
Somewhere along the way, this whole competition had boiled down to her. He still wanted to win—of course he did, if for no other reason than to repay the Lundens for everything they’d done for him—but all he could think about as he stared up at the hotel room ceiling was Skye.
His entire menu was a love letter to the one woman in all the world who might be able to read it and know what it meant.
Beck breathed out and marveled at how calm he felt. He would’ve thought that the knowledge of what he was about to do, how much of himself he’d have to expose, would fill him with the kind of terror and avoidance usually reserved for full-on combat and cleaning out the bilge.
Yeah, his stomach was jumpy with nerves, and his palms felt clammy against the sheet … but it was nothing he couldn’t push through. Nothing that would stop him from doing what had to be done.
Today was the day he’d make his last stand.
And if he went down, at least he’d go down fighting.
*
Skye stared at herself in the mirror as she buttoned up her white chef’s jacket. Same corkscrew curls, just a shade too light to make her an actual redhead. But she’d gotten the redhead’s pasty complexion, which seemed unfair, especially given her tendency to freckle.
Same blue eyes. Same round cheeks and face and, oh hell, everything.
She looked for the woman Beck had seen, that night at Queenie Pie, but she couldn’t find her in the pale, tired-looking woman in the mirror.
“Today is going to be a good day,” Fiona announced from the door of the bathroom.
Because of this morning’s early start, they’d spent the night at the hotel where the competition was being held instead of going home. At least, that was the reason Skye had given her parents when she finally called to check in with them.
That conversation had made it clear they only noticed she was gone when Jeremiah came looking for her at their house, so it was hard to feel too guilty for abandoning them a second time. Although her mother had certainly done her best.
“When is that silly contest over?” Annika’s voice was vaguely petulant, and Skye had distinctly heard the snick of a lighter in the background.
“Soon,” Skye promised, but her heart wasn’t up to the usual round of assurances and scrambling for whatever scraps of caring her mother might toss her way, so all she’d said was “Tell Jeremiah I said good night, okay? You made sure the guest room was made up for him, and that he has towels and stuff. Right?”
“Yes, yes. He’s fine. But you should be here with him, not playing around in some kitchen.”
Not for the first time, Skye was glad she’d never mentioned the identity of the chef who was her biggest competition in the RSC. She didn’t need to deal with her mother’s feelings about Henry Beck, as well as her own.
She’d said goodbye and hung up, all the time aware of the fact that recognizing the futility of loving Beck hadn’t, in fact, done much to wipe that love out of existence.
It was still there, hours later, throbbing in her chest with every beat of her heart as she prepared to face him for what might well be the last time.
Whichever one of them won, there wouldn’t be any reason to see each other again after today.
That knowledge was an endless expanse of open highway spooling out in front of her, a long, lonely road to nowhere.
A slim arm slipped around her shoulders reminded her that she wasn’t alone.
Leaning her curly head against Fiona’s sleek cap of white-blonde hair, Skye closed her eyes and let herself feel the warmth and acceptance of the embrace.
Her friends, the other Queenie Pie chefs … They were her real family. What did it matter if her parents didn’t understand why she’d entered the RSC, or even why she’d become a chef in the first place?
She had the family she’d cobbled together from the people she loved and worked with, the people who had her back and kept her sane through the daily frustrations and joys of owning her own small business.
Which she’d still own, even if she lost today. She’d still have Queenie Pie, and her family of misfits and outcasts.
The thought was like opening a valve in her brain. The pressure that had filled her near to bursting gusted out of her on a sigh, and Skye felt lightheaded with relief.
No matter what happened today, she’d still have the life she’d chosen with the people she cared about.
And once she accepted the fact that winning wouldn’t make her parents suddenly support her in that life, the serenity and calm she’d been searching for enveloped her in a warm cloud of confidence.
“You’re ready,” Fiona observed, her pale eyes keen in the mirror.
Skye nodded. “Let’s go get ’em.”
*
The competition kitchen felt weirdly empty. No chaos of frantic chefs, no judges … just Beck and Winslow, banging through their set list and executing dishes with precise efficiency.
Eva and her assistant were in and out, keeping tabs on the time, watching for rules violations, and just generally being on hand in case anything went down.
But for the most part, Beck barely noticed anything beyond the food in front of him.
He was cooking for his life, for his future, and he knew it.
The clock ticked closer and closer to eleven thirty, when the first course would need to be plated and ready to serve to Eva, Claire, Kane, Devon … and Skye.
Stay focused, he told himself, blinking sweat out of his eyes and rubbing the sleeve of his chef coat over his forehead. The details matter.
Everything mattered.
Five seconds before the buzzer went off, he and Win were scrambling to get their first course plated and ready, reaching over each other with spoons full of sauce and sprinkling garnish. But whe
n Eva called time, they stepped back from the table, hands in the air, and looked at each other.
“We made it,” Win breathed.
Beck nodded, although for him, the hardest part was yet to come. “One course down. Let’s keep up the intensity plating the next.”
They each picked up a tray and followed Eva out of the kitchen and across the hall to the judging room.
Beck was watching his step and doing his best to keep his tray level as they entered the room, which was set up with a long, banquet-style table covered in a white tablecloth. The chairs for the judges were arrayed along the back side of the table, all in a row, and Beck closed his eyes for a second to come to grips with exactly how much this was going to be like performing for an audience.
Win started passing out plates as Beck opened his eyes. The first person he saw was Skye, sitting on the end. She gave him a nod, but before he could nod back, or smile, or figure out the right thing to do, Skye tilted her head to indicate the person sitting beside her.
Beck glanced over, then did a ridiculously cartoonish double take, because the person in the chair next to Skye was Nina Lunden.
The woman who’d given him a chance when he had nowhere else to go.
Nina gave him one of her soft smiles, but the look in her eyes was fierce with pride.
“Surprise?” Win’s tentative voice at his side nearly startled Beck into bobbling his tray.
“That was you?” Beck asked, handing his tray off to Winslow, who’d already passed out the plates from his own.
Win rolled his eyes, but Beck could tell he was still nervous. “Why do you think I was so gung ho about plating an extra portion?”
Beck, who’d thought Win was exercising a very commendable caution with his contingency plan, clapped him on the back before he could run off to serve the rest of the judges.
“Thanks, man,” Beck said, looking right into Win’s eyes. He wanted Win to know he meant it, from the bottom of his heart.
Win relaxed enough to send Beck a cocky grin over his shoulder as he walked back to the judges’ table. “Come on. Like we’d let you go through all this without any family here.”
Beck’s breath caught in his throat.
Family.
Nina was still smiling at him when he looked back to her, and she gave him a nod and a discreet thumbs-up just as Eva Jansen cleared her throat.
“Thank you, chefs. And welcome to the final judging of this year’s Rising Star Chef competition.”
Everyone clapped, which made Beck feel more onstage than he had yet. He quelled the urge to fidget by bracing his legs apart in an at-ease position and clasping his left wrist in his right hand behind his back.
“And a very special welcome,” Eva continued with a nervous smile, “to Nina Lunden, part-owner of Lunden’s Tavern, who is here to support Chefs Beck and Jones.”
“Thank you,” Nina said, nodding comfortably at Eva as the younger woman sat back down beside her. “You did that very well, dear. And don’t you look pretty! No wonder Danny gets that look on his face whenever he’s on the phone with you.”
Eva flushed, probably with a combination of delight and embarrassment, and Beck noted Nina’s pleased grin as she sat back in her seat.
Nina caught his glance and sent him a slow wink, and that, more than anything else, gave Beck the guts to get on with it.
He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “Before we begin, I want to thank the RSC for giving me the chance to tell the story of my life through food. Some of the events that shaped me, that made me the chef I am today, are things I haven’t talked about much.”
He flicked a brief look at Skye, whose eyebrows were somewhere up near her hairline. Beck amended his statement. “Okay, all of them. I don’t like to talk about my past. But that’s why I wanted to thank you, because I have some things I need to say—and this challenge gave me a way to say them, in a language I know how to speak. The language of food.”
A disconcerting hush had descended over the large room, and Beck abruptly wished it wasn’t quite so big. He felt like he had to really speak up to push his voice into the corners of the converted conference room.
He cleared his throat again, his vocal cords clamping down tight. But he could do this. He’d survived worse.
All he had to do was keep the objective in mind—to show Skye he could open up. That he wanted her to know him, all of him, including the ugly pieces of his past.
Maybe then she’d understand how much he loved her.
“The first course we have for you today is a play on something my mom used to make me when I was little. Like most kids, I guess, I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—but my mom would do them like grilled cheese, with buttered bread in a skillet. The peanut butter would get all gooey.” He swallowed, lost in the memory for a moment. “Anyway, they were great. And this is my take on it—we made everything from scratch, including the peanut butter. The jelly is a raspberry and red wine conserve. Enjoy.”
With that, he pivoted on his heel and marched out of the room before anyone could take a bite.
“Time to plate the next course,” he muttered to Winslow, but that was only part of the reason.
As he stalked back into the kitchen and put his head down, hands moving swift and sure over the plates already set up on the stainless steel work table, Beck took the opportunity to breathe deeply for the first time in ten minutes. He’d made it through the first bit of his story.
But it was only going to get tougher from here on out.
Chapter 27
At the other end of the banquet table, the judges and Eva busily tasted and commented, making notes and conferring about Beck’s classy, adult take on a PB & J.
Skye ran her finger through a streak of red raspberry conserve and wished desperately for a moment alone to process what she’d heard.
Beck had a family. A good family, from what he’d described, which was more than she’d ever known before.
And it certainly didn’t seem as if he were making up something to placate the judges, the way he’d planned. She’d never heard anything so intensely personal from Beck, and the way he’d had to brace himself to tell the story, the slow grate of his words as they tore from him … no. Beck wasn’t faking his way through this challenge.
He was ripping himself open and laying his past out on the table for everyone to see.
But why? What made him change his mind? And what was he going to say next?
Her brain didn’t have time to spin out any further because the woman next to her turned and said, “So. You’re Skye Gladwell.”
Instantly wary, Skye gave Nina Lunden her best smile. “That’s me.”
Nina nodded, the warm lighting in the judging chamber glinting off the threads of silver in her graying hair.
She had a motherly look about her, Skye thought—well, okay. She didn’t look anything like Skye’s mother, who was rail-thin and sharply angled, skin leathery and lined from years of sun, smoke, and working with welding tools to make her huge, avant-garde iron sculptures.
Nina Lunden appeared to be built along more classically maternal lines, softer and rounder, with arms that looked ready to hug and a mouth made for smiling. The only lines on her deceptively youthful face were crinkles around her eyes and creases beside her mouth—the lines that came from laughing.
But when Skye met Nina’s gaze, all of that sweet motherliness faded away in the piercing sharpness of Nina’s stare.
“I’m glad to get the chance to meet you,” Nina said, her voice friendly but her eyes studying Skye with that uncomfortably intense edge. “I’ve heard so much about you from my kids.”
Skye swallowed, the saltiness of Beck’s roasted peanut butter suddenly sticking in her throat and drying her mouth. She wasn’t sure what to say; this was awkward on so many levels.
What had the Lunden men told their mother about her? What did they even know? Beck was so closemouthed, it was possible that all they’d had to share with Nina were
their impressions of a fellow competitor, and the fact that she and Beck had a history.
The fact that they were competitors in the finals of the RSC together—that alone was enough to make this a tricky conversation, at best.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Skye hedged, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt.
“When Winslow called me and asked if there was any way I could take a few days and come out here to support Beck, I was so glad to be able to do it. With Jules, Max, and Danny all home and keeping an eye on the restaurant—and on my stubborn husband, who just had heart surgery and really shouldn’t overdo—I felt like I should seize the chance. I hardly ever get a vacation. Well, you know what it’s like—you own your own place, too, don’t you?”
“The Queenie Pie Café,” Skye supplied, the familiar surge of pride filling her.
“Then you know all about how it is.” Nina sat back in her chair. She had on a pair of black pants and a simple sweater, with a white collared shirt peeking out from the neckline, and it made her look effortlessly chic and very New York.
Skye was suddenly and achingly aware of her own ensemble—a white chef’s jacket over a pair of silky, low-slung and wide-legged pants with a purple paisley pattern.
A little wacky, even for her, but she hadn’t had her mind on fashion when she’d grabbed them.
“I do,” she agreed, beginning to relax a little as the stream of inconsequential small talk carried them along. “Gosh, until the first part of the competition in Chicago, I don’t think I’d left San Francisco in five years. Maybe longer.”
“It ought to be easier for me.” Nina sighed. “Since I’ve got a partner, in work and in life, to help share the load.”
Skye stiffened, feeling the trap spring closed around her. “Well, I’m lucky enough to have great, reliable employees,” she said through numb lips. “We help each other out.”
“Still,” Nina said innocently. “There’s nothing quite like running a restaurant with someone who has an equal stake in it.”
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